Globetrotting cookies tell travel tales

Teacher Christina Freitag points out places where the runaway gingerbread men sent postscards from. Teachers used the Christmas fantasy to teach geography lessons to their students.

After decorating him, Jacob Workins, bites into one of the wayward gingerbread men at Cairo Elementary on Monday.

A number of short, faceless gingerbread men traveled from sea to shining sea earlier this month as they tried to escape the hungry mouths of kindergartners at Cairo Elementary School.

Two weeks ago, three classes of kindergartners at the school made gingerbread men from scratch, put them in the cafeteria's oven, and then returned to eat the fruits of their labor.

But as the students learned, the gingerbread men had other ideas. After a search throughout the campus for the cookies, the students found a note written by the gingerbread men telling of their hurried run from the school.

While in reality the gingerbread men were safely ensconced in the school's freezer, the students were happy to believe that the holiday cookies had heeded the advice of their ancestor, the storied first "Gingerbread Man." Following that tradition, the Cairo gingerbread men made a silent escape, traveling as far west as Washington state and Colorado.

Others thought they would get a tan in the Florida Keys, post cards show. At least one headed for the smooth country sounds of Nashville, where he apparently performed with Carrie Underwood at the Grand Ole Opry.

Yet another must have hitchhiked to Manhattan in order to share a cup of coffee with the big man himself -- Santa Claus. Another was just inches from that beacon of freedom, the Statue of Liberty.

Alas, freedom was not something these gingerbread men could enjoy for long. When Cairo Elementary School Cafeteria Supervisor Judy Ray announced the return of the gingerbread men Monday afternoon -- they had apparently slipped in through the back door -- it was in front of a gaggle of open-mouthed 5-year-olds with only one thing on their minds: Candy.

"I'll eat the head first," giggled Catherine O'Brien after she decorated her gingerbread man with icing and chocolate M&Ms. Henry Thurby, 6, could barely stop rubbing his hands together with glee as he joined a total of 21 kindergartners who thought the head of the gingerbread men looked more appealing than the rest of his well-traveled body.

But just to be sure, teachers created a graph of first bites. You could almost hear the gingerbread men cry post-humously as it became clear that 11 students had eaten their right feet, 10 had eaten their left feet, two had eaten their left arms, and absolutely none had found any apparent charm in the men's upper right appendages.

"We contacted different people in different states to send us post cards," said Valerie Norman, who teaches one of the kindergarten classes that took part in the part-geography, part-math and part-fairytale lesson.